The Myth of "Neutral" Education: My Speech to the TP Academy Educators Summit 42:32

Hey, everybody. My remarks at the Turning Point Academy Educator Summit. I also take questions from the audience. What is education and how should we properly understand education? Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and become a member today. Members.charliekirk.com. That is members.charliekirk.com. As always, you can email us, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky.

to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here.

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That's wonderful, Hudson. Great work. And, you know, we've had a very slow summer, not a lot going on. Just kind of a boring news cycle. And so I don't...

I don't have as much time as I would like always to check in with some of our projects, given what's happening in a couple months here. But I'm just thrilled to see the progress, Hudson, Jennifer, and Francine, and the whole team, and Scott. Really wonderful. And I want to talk about one thing, and then we'll do questions, which I think is the most fun, right? So it's one major thing, which is I believe the biggest problem is

in how parents view education in the country. And this is the fundamental issue. So I started to realize this as I would travel and talk about education from a political context. And politicians and parents would say all the time, all I want from my local school is a school that will teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. How many times have you guys heard this? That is so wrong.

And it is so cringe to hear. And for the conservative movement to embrace this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what education is. Now, I want to contextualize this. That is okay to believe if you might live, I don't know, it's a good progress step if you live in California, where, Rob, my pastor does, and some of you do, where they've just passed a law that

where it is against the law if a kid comes out as transgender to tell the parents.

That is now law in California. Not that you might want to. It is against the law. If you have a 12-year-old in a classroom and the 12-year-old is a boy and says that he is a girl, it is now against the law for the teacher to call up the parent and say, hey, the 12-year-old is on hormone blockers, taking gender assignment care. That is now law in California. So to move away from that towards reading, writing arithmetic probably is a good step.

But what is education? Education is not just the transference of technical skills. That is easy. You could do that by watching a bunch of YouTube videos. Education should be the development and the nourishing of the soul and the character of a child.

And that is completely different than what most people think education is. Secondly, as involved in this, when I hear some conservatives talk about education, they say, I just want a neutral classroom. I want all viewpoints to be heard equally. And I want my kid to be able to choose. What an awful idea.

And so you should ask when someone says something as stupid as that. So, okay, wait, so you think that when we're talking about germ theory, we should like have both sides of the argument? Like, you know, oh yeah, you could do bloodletting or you could understand that you can have communicable diseases and bacteria and viral infections. We have both sides of the argument when it comes to whether or not the earth is the center of our galaxy or the sun is the center of our galaxy? Or how about when it comes to morals, right? When it comes to

The moral dimension, should we have both sides of the argument in that case? We have fallen for a 1960s new left postmodernist liberal lie that most people who are conservatives are actually liberals and they don't know it. Well, not just, yeah, I wouldn't even say that. I'd say that most, honestly, of people that attend our events are liberals when it comes to education.

For example, most people who are conservatives when it comes to education, they think the government has a primary role in education. The state does not have a role in educating your child. Period. The state does not have a role. And it is a radical proposition to say that out loud. However, it's how the country was founded and became the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world. We did not have a department education when Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams learned to speak fluent Hebrew.

They were taught by either their parents or by the religious local community institutions that shepherd them through a Christian classical educational model. And so those two things I want to just kind of reemphasize. When people say, I just want my child to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, you should then ask them,

What happens when they come to a moral fork in the road? So once you give your child over to the government-run school system, which if you run the math, it's a remarkable amount of time. You're basically telling the state, you are now in charge of my child, I am not. And that is, on average, it could go anywhere between 40 to 60 hours a week that you're basically allowing some stranger –

To develop and nourish your child. Okay, so that's 40 to 60 hours a week. Let's just take the lower. That's 40 hours a week. That is 160 hours a month. And school's in session for what? Seven or eight months a year? So you're talking potentially over 1,000 hours a year, not to mention over 18 years. 15 to 18,000 hours that you are handing your child over to strangers, right?

To allow them to develop your child. And you say, I only want reading, writing, and arithmetic to be taught. That will never happen, first of all. Because at some point, a child yearns to know what is just.

And we don't have to come up with that on our own. Plato and Aristotle told us that. A child will always try to figure out what is justice. It's the most fundamental question a human being has. What is justice? It's a wonky way of saying, what is right and wrong? When should we punish things? When should we reward things? And you're trying to tell me a teacher will not put that forward? Of course they will. For example, is cheating wrong? Yes, it is. Of course it is. So when you're teaching, reading, writing arithmetic, and you're cheating on the science test...

Doesn't somebody have to make a moral argument? Of course. When you're interrupting a fellow classmate, does the teacher have to make a moral argument? When you're late for class, does a teacher have to make a moral argument? When you don't dress properly with a dress code. Everything when it comes to education is moral, not technical. But we have been propagandized to believe that we can hand over our children and they're going to come out just like widgets in assembly line with a bunch of skills and the same morals that they were raised with ages 0-6.

And here is why we're so hesitant is because we're hesitant to, for whatever reason, I don't quite get it because I think it's, we're really, we being, you know, freedom loving conservative, it's not you guys in the room, but just generally, we're really afraid of the names they call us. I do this for a living. And I have to tell you that actually is the reason. It's not that they have like massive control of the institutions. They kind of do. We outnumber them.

We do? We don't do the right thing because we're afraid of being called bad names. Period. And when you get it put that way, you're like, wow, we're losing the country because we're being afraid of being called bad names? Yes. It's that simple. We are afraid to stand up to the government educational leviathan because you don't want to be called a Christian nationalist or whatever nonsense they say. You don't want to be called an outdated, anti-educational person. Then finally...

The second part of that is when a child is in an educational environment and you think they're getting a neutral education, there is some standard that they are comparing that to.

And so when you hand a child over to a non-Christian or a secular educational environment, they are not going to be comparing their standard to the perfect laws of God. They're going to be comparing their standard to some sort of ever-moving target of secular nonsense. And

If we are honest with ourselves, the failures we have in the country are downstream of us not prioritizing the education of our children seriously 30 or 40 years ago, handing them over to the state, and acting as if I want them to hear both sides of the debate or the argument. Well, how about you teach them something first? It's hard enough to teach a fourth grader anything, let alone giving them both sides of the debate, and this is where it really drives them nuts. Not all ideas are created equal.

All human beings are created equal. Not all ideas are created equal. And they say, how dare you say one idea is better than the other? Which, of course, certain ideas are better than others. The promise of Christianity is a lot better than paganism. Western civilization is a lot better than Islamic fundamentalism. And then they call us fascists when you say that. But again, you should reject all those name-calling. But that is at the fundamental core of it, is that

The culture that we are destroying, we're committing suicide as a country. It's really sad to see. Hopefully we can reverse it. Is largely because of our lack of grasping these educational concepts. But we are afraid to lead with what we know to be true. And to say that, no, the standard that we want our children to be educated behind is one that comes from the almighty. It comes from the eternal. It comes from the divine. It doesn't come from a test tube.

It doesn't come from experts in some sort of a committee. And the way that we've been propagandized to believe how education works, from how the kids sit in class, from what they are taught, is a Prussian, John Dewey, modern invention of the administrative state. That we talk about the deep state all the time in politics, that you do not have a deep state if you do not have an educational system that primes people to go work for a deep state.

to not be critical thinkers, to not be developed in their soul, to just be widgets in an assembly line, show up, do what you're told, wear the mask, take the sixth vaccine, and keep on repeating that America is systemically racist and be a good little soldier.

The country that embraced liberty, and I'll close with this and we'll do questions, is you cannot have liberty, which is a fundamental core American value. The American trinity, I got this from Dennis Prager, is in God we trust, liberty, and e pluribus unum, all three of which, e pluribus unum means out of many one, it's a Latin phrase, meaning we are all one species. It is a biblical and Christian idea. You cannot have liberty if you do not have people that are taught in self-government.

And this is the tension point. If you want to say why is the country so divided, is you have tens of millions of people that go to government-run schools and you act as if liberty can continue. It's not going to happen. Now, you can have moments of revival and you can release people from the shackles of what they have been raised in. But if you have 18 years of indoctrination that you're up against where they do not

talk about the necessary components of what self-government is, or how to develop a child into a sovereign citizen, or the necessary component of strong families, or any of these things, then of course they're going to turn to the administrative state. This is the best way I can put it. Don't be shocked when a bunch of young people become statists or leftists when they were educated in the statist and leftist machine.

It shouldn't shock you, regardless of how many school boards you take over. I love that, by the way. I'm a really big fan of that. Regardless of how many things you do, the system itself, the enterprising value is corrupt to the core. And I know some of you teach in government-run schools. We need to support you and help you. But you guys know that the incentive structure is about, I'm going to teach, and this is where the left is very, very effective, is that they then say, oh,

The conservatives are super weak and they're too distracted doing their own thing. And we take away the Ten Commandments from our school system, which thankfully Louisiana is putting them back. It's a small step, but it's a good step and it should be applauded. Is that they say, well, we'll just put in our own Ten Commandments. And remember, by some standard, you will be educating a child by because they'll be asking the question, what is justice? And so therefore, a child, when they're eight years old, they get rid of the Ten Commandments and they'll put in

the BLM commandments or the how to be an anti-racist or the gay pride flag. So you have substitute moral orders that are implemented when we as Christians have abandoned the public square. Now, why we abandoned the public square is not that hard to figure out. It's just, we stopped caring a long time ago and now we're trying to rebuild institutions like this, which is super important. But

What all of you are embarking on, what you should embark on, is you should be unapologetic in your presentation that you are trying to develop a child in a certain direction. You are not just hoping that you're like, well, let's see how it works out. No, you are aiming towards something. It is not an act of randomness. There is direction to your education.

Education literally means in Latin to lead forth, to lead forth towards something. And yet parents believe like, well, if they end up being a liberal, they're a liberal. If they're a conservative, they're a conservative because I don't want to get in the way of, you know, their development. And that viewpoint is,

Thank you.

and want to protect liberty and freedom. And most importantly, know that there is a God, they are not God, and that they want to obey God's teaching and to worship God. And that's what you as educators are tasked to do. All right, I need to tell you guys about Strong Cell. It's amazing. With nearly a million units bought by you.

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dot com forward slash Charlie. And don't forget to use special discount code Charlie at checkout to get a special 20 percent off just for Kirk listeners. Strong sell dot com forward slash Charlie. Check it out right now. OK, let's do some questions, guys. I hope that made sense. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. So there's a lot of us that are running for school board, a lot of conservatives. I'm running for school board in a very large Texas district.

I was wondering what advice you would give to conservatives who are on school boards and who are running for school boards. It's a great question. I don't want to diminish that. I think it's important. But you're probably going to get nothing done. And I'm just going to be honest. We've been doing this for like 10 years. Does anybody have similar experiences, by the way? Yeah. They will lie. They will steal. They will cheat. They will destroy documents. But you still should do it. And it's important to expose, try to build consensus. What part of Texas are you in? Oh, yeah. That's...

It should be conservative, right? But I'm sure it's liberal and it's been infiltrated by a lot of different things. Yeah, look, the best advice I can have is even if you get a majority, this is the best way I could put it, is that you see how Congress is nothing more than an annoyance for the bureaucracies. They don't listen to Congress. Like the Secret Service does whatever they want. The FBI does whatever they want. The Department of Justice, whatever they want. Like there's no check and balance anymore because the form and structure of our government no longer exists.

This is one of the reasons why I'm so involved in these next couple months because I actually want the constitutional form to be reinstituted. School boards are the same way.

They don't listen to school boards. They think it's an annoyance. They're like, okay, just give us our money, and they'll do some sob story about, you know, this one kid that can't have lunch if you don't authorize, you know, 500% increase in this thing. And so, but it's still a worthy fight on exposing and launching an effort to do that. But all the energy it takes to retake school boards, I think, is better long-term directed in building our own educational institutions.

And I'm not saying it's not important because we should let them, because I'm conflicted. At the same time, there are students in these government-run schools that deserve to be rescued.

They deserve to be brought out. That is why I think we need to get more school choice legislation, like we have in Arizona with our friends at Dream City, to try to get them out and to try to allow the money to follow the child. But I wish I had better news for you. It's just, I can't tell you how many school board members come up to me and they're like, Charlie, we have a majority on the school board and no one listens to us. And I was like, well, just close the school. And they're like, well, that's too radical. I go, if you're not willing to close the local school, then you shouldn't be on the school board. All right, we got a question over here.

Yes, we had a great breakout session earlier of school leaders that are trying to do some great work across the nation. One of the things that really stuck with me and what was said over there is that we know that we're one legislation away, one group meeting away these legislators of things rapidly changing.

To be able to get legislature to be on our side, a great idea was brought up about political action committees putting together a PAC that is going to support people that are trying to do things like we are within education and having Christ-centered education with biblical values and beliefs. Is there anything within...

turning point or ideas that you might have on being able to get political action committees together in whatever state might be having school choice so that we have backing in the halls of Congress to be able to do what's right for kids. Yeah, it's a great point. We,

On Turning Point Action, we're temporarily more focused on winning, and then we'll focus on legislation. But it's interesting. I would be curious. Is anyone here against school choice? I'm sure some people are. Yeah. See, that's about half the hands go up. So it's not a winner like you think it is. And I would imagine, and you don't want the government telling you what to teach, right? Right. Yes, like Sweden, right? So it's not even the winner that people think it is. Half this room is against school choice.

So, again, in Arizona, we love it because we could tell you none of that stuff happens. We have fully Christian schools. No strings attached. But it's a legitimate concern. And, again, I go to Texas grassroots groups. I get heckled when I start advocating for school choice. Like, scream that. So, yes, we do. That's why we don't get involved in the deepest policy fights because it's just it's a great way to.

divide folks. I happen to believe it's a good idea, especially in states like Arizona and Texas. I don't know the details of the policy of it, but it's a legitimate concern, which is that are you allowing the government to then come into your homeschooling environment? Potentially. Potentially. So, yes, ma'am.

Right now, the homeschoolers are being rebranded with the money from the government, the PEP. It's a lot of confusion. A lot of parents don't know that it can be dangerous for the freedom that we have as homeschooled parents. Do you mean federal money or you mean state money? Step up. Step up. State money? Yeah. Step up money? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, it's a state program here in Florida. Yes. So if you're a homeschooler in Florida, does the Florida government have jurisdiction if you take the money over your curriculum? It's brand new. It's like last year, the starting, but it's a lot of movement, like parents, like worries about...

you know, participate, you have to de-enroll the student as a homeschool. Now it's part of the government. Oh, yeah. So look, here's the general rule, which is where I side with the homeschool skeptics.

because I basically am skeptical of everything that happens right now, because I just think these people lie to us relentlessly. And, again, it's too bad, because I used to be idealist, and then, you know, that dies quickly. Which is that you do not get government money, it's taxpayer money, but you don't get money from the Treasury typically without strings. It almost never happens.

Now, in Arizona, we still have it. But, I mean, look, I understand that it's a financial boost. We're going to homeschool all of our kids. I'm not taking any money from anybody. I'm not, again, we're financially independent, praise God. But, like, I'm not going to register anybody. Like, we're kind of crazy people that don't even, like, listen to all the medical stuff, right? Because I think they're poisoning our kids. Sorry. Like, that's my opinion. But, yeah, like, I just, if you need, what is it, like, extra $7,000 a year per student probably? Am I right? Yeah.

8,000 a year. That's about right. Per student per year. Yeah, but public school students get double. Look, so if you need the 8,000 a year, which is a lot of money, right, to do that, just understand that soon you'll get a knock on the door from the Florida Department of Education and they'll want to see what you're teaching your kid. And if you think I'm exaggerating, that is very conceivable.

Yes. So I'm a homeschool mom who comes from a medical background, left that background, homeschool my kids. I'm in a co-op. But the church that I'm in, I'm finding it's hard to inspire even the people around me in the church, just like you said, to understand that this is truly happening in a small town in Florida.

What is the best way to get their attention, to get this out there, to say this is true, this is happening to our church? What city? Mount Dora, Florida. I'm about 45 minutes outside of Orlando. Okay, great. First of all, I love it. You're isolating my life's work.

Which is how do I get good people to care? Yeah, because they think that they do. They think that they understand. They think that they're right. They don't. Again, this is my whole project, right? How do I get good people to care? I could put that on a shirt, right? How do you get good people to care?

You dedicate 12 years of your life and keep building and be relentless. At least, let me tell you from the Turning Point USA standpoint, how do I get college kids to care? Because college kids care way more than most Christians, right? As far as our Turning Point kids do. Like they do. They're on fire. They're organizing. And this is why we're my California friends. My California friends are, there's something different about Californians than

is because they're surrounded. They see it. It's not an abstraction, right? They see that the local July 4th parades are cancelled and they have month-long gay pride parades. Right? They see that there are more gay flags than American flags, right? It's like they are the resistance in Nazi-occupied France, right? There's no persuasion. They see the bombardment every day. 45 minutes outside of Orlando, you know, this is West Germany, right? Times are great.

So how do you get good people to care? I'll let you know when I totally figure it out. So because it's it's been my life's work. And so I haven't totally figured it out. But I will say this is that all of you as leaders challenging the good people to become courageous people is critically important. And this is this is the overarching thing is that.

You can never stop caring because if you do, then everything falls apart. Right. If it goes in kind of gradations. And this is why during covid. Sorry. During the lockdowns, not covid. Very big a distinction. I catch myself. We decided to lock down our society and we shouldn't have during the lockdowns.

that we saw a lot of people waking up, wow, I never knew how bad it was, I never knew how bad it could get. And that was just, we all know, that was just a little taste of what they have planned for us, right? But it is, the Bible tells us this repeatedly, which is that human beings do not desire liberty. And that is one of the hardest truths. And again, I got in a debate the other day, someone told me, yeah, human beings want to be free.

That is the most unbiblical idea I've ever heard. Like, where is that evidence at all? When God delivered his chosen people out of Egypt into the desert, took them like two and a half weeks or days, like bring us back to slavery under Hitler, Pharaoh. And because at least we had meat.

and onions and leeks and cucumbers. By the way, God blew quail off course and manna from heaven. They needed one for nothing, but they wanted to go back to slavery where they didn't even have a Sabbath for seven days a week because the food was better. That's how a lot of Christians are. So how do you, I'll let you know when I totally figure it out. But, and this is one of the things that frustrates me the most is how much non-religious secular left people care about

about taking over the country and how little spirit-filled Christians care about saving the country.

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So, uh, I'm not directly involved in education. I work as a programmer background in math and data science. Uh, actually I'm really passionate about education and this conference has been amazing. Just kind of seeing the individuals and the organizations who have been, um, uh, championing, uh, restoration of classical Christian, uh, education. But that being said, uh, one of the things that I've seen, uh, being issue is the gap, I guess, between industry and academia. Um,

Um, I've personally gone through the route of programming and, uh, I'm looking at a PhD in math with a focus on financial math because I realized that the industry aspect has a huge component to what we're doing as educators. And I think a lot of the same issues that we see going on in education obviously are bleeding into industry. And I'm just curious, um,

your thoughts, I guess, in general, I guess about kind of, um, I guess, uh, bridging that gap between the two and really, um, um,

The way that I would see it, at least, is you can really build a self-sustaining system where, again, you have systems of finance and other support structures that are empowering and enabling more educators. But that's all I'll say for now. It's a good question. Here's my general view of where education goes. Hillsdale is America's greatest college. They're wonderful. Is that at Hillsdale, they have the most desired graduates to be hired.

But what's remarkable is that they do not really have a computer science department. They don't have the technical side that you think you need to go to college for. They just have really honest, courageous, wise graduates that can figure out skills wherever they go. And that's what education should be, right? The layering of skills on top is what I think postgraduate or even technical training is, that if you have virtuous people,

but understand what it means to be filled with wisdom and the spirit, you can figure out all that. I think that industry, big business, coming into college has been a very negative thing, largely, because business, they don't care if they're teaching...

you know, that men can give birth at Arizona State University. And so they give hundreds of millions of dollars into these schools, and especially higher education, and subsidize the worst aspects of it as long as they can get 800 data programmers a year, if that makes sense. So yeah, look, it's a very difficult system. And this is the other thing that drives me crazy. The third thing, again, I could talk about college, which is not what we're talking about today, but it's part of it. When parents say, well, I just want my kid to be able to get a good job. I say, don't you want your kid to be a good person?

And they're like, oh, they're already a good person. Wow, that's amazing. And so then I say, well, how do you think they're going to get a good job? Oh, you know, they get a degree at, you know, Colorado University Boulder. Okay, great. I'm sure they'll be a superstar after that. So, but I ask this question of employers all the time, and we are an employer. Anyone here run a business? Okay, would you, if you were given two different applications and you were not able to meet them, application A went to the University of Denver,

Graduated with great marks. Application B, did not go to college but traveled to 50 countries. Which person would you hire? Not even a question. I mean, the person who's traveled the world and seen a lot and understood that you're not the only thing that exists? Or some guy that studied Herbert Marcuse at University of Denver? Your post-structuralist nonsense. Yeah, like pass, pass.

I mean, most American kids don't have passports, let alone travel to 50 countries. Anyway, that's not a hypothetical. I say this to parents all the time. I say, instead of going $140,000 in debt, go send your kid, like, you have to go live in other countries. Like, well, that's really dangerous. And like, you think like going to a college campus is like a, not? Not?

Question over here. Okay, hi. I am the government affairs director for Stop Up for Students. So we administer all the scholarships in the state of Florida. So I'd love to talk to you guys about advocacy and all that stuff afterwards. But up until two years ago, the scholarships were income limited. And then two years ago, Governor DeSantis made them universal. Fast forward to today, all of our opponents are arguing we're seeing schools closed throughout Florida, Duval, down here in South Florida. And now they're saying these scholarship programs are taking money and they are –

forcing public schools to close. And so I would love to hear your response to that argument. Yeah, I think it's awesome that they're closing. These places have done such damage to our country. And if more families are educating their kids and less LGBT zealots in Miami-Dade County are educating our kids, I mean... But here's the thing. With...

Education acts as if they are resistant to any sort of disruption or change or check and balance, which is they're one of the few things that operate that way. I guarantee you many of you have had to fire employees before, had to downsize during the 2008 financial crisis, or even the last couple of years, that you've had to make adjustments because of supply and demand and because of the ever-changing dynamics, yet government education should just be this constant growth towards the oblivion.

And, yeah, I mean, I say if the market is showing that parents can do a better job, again, this whole idea that the state needs a heavy hand in education is flawed from the beginning. One of my passion projects, you know, one day will be I hope the Department of Education gets closed or largely closed. It should not exist, right? And who knows how realistic that is because it's a beast. I don't even think that there should be state-based department educations, but...

Again, I'm very pro-education. I just want parents to no longer release their responsibility to...

to the state. So that's my response, is that the fact that inefficient, bloated, corrupt, left-wing government schools are closing, I think it's great news. Thank you, Governor DeSantis, for his leadership on that. Hey, Charlie. I went to a God family country college, High Point University, which I recommend you to come check it out. And it instilled in me the passion of teaching. This conference and summit renovated and watered the principle on how happy, how joyful and purposeful can be becoming a teacher.

So my question to you is, how come, well, at least in the past, I hear you say to parents to take their students, their kids, and homeschool them rather than asking students or purposeful students to become teachers or start a C5 school. That's my question. Yeah, so for students not to become teachers, you mean? I mean, how come you haven't promoted that much more over the radio and just telling parents to do that? Oh, yeah, I mean, because I think parents should be the teachers. So I think we have way too many teachers in this country.

Thank you. I'm sorry, like we do. I mean, I think that millions of parents need to become teachers again.

So, and also, the idea that most of our conservative kids want to become teachers, I'm glad you want to. I think it's great. Yeah, it's just, it doesn't fit the mold, right? I mean, again, I'm a product of many different things. It's very funny, Hudson will tell you. From third, fourth, and fifth grade, I went to Christian Heritage Academy. Then I went to a government-run school from sixth grade to a senior in high school, right? And only one of my schools claims me as an alumni. Go figure, right? Right?

No, it's the craziest thing. If you go to Wheeling High School, I don't know who he is. I don't think he went here as if I'm some sort of school shooter or something, right? No, it's really demented, right? It's, I don't know about him, and he's not around here. And I think he went to Hersey or Buffalo Grove or something. He went over to one of those schools. But all kidding aside is that I could tell you the damage, the inefficiency, the bloatedness of government-run schools. I've lived it.

Right. And with that being said, of course, there are roles for Christian schools of parents that can't do that. My general thesis, though.

is that parents have a lot more ability to be heavily involved in their kids' education than they ever give themselves credit for. And this is why I was so enthusiastic for J.D. Vance to become the vice president for President Trump. He repeatedly would talk about, again, we get in trouble when we say this, but it's important, is that we want to create an economy where the female does not have to get into the workforce if she doesn't choose. And, again, if...

The wife, not the female, you know what I mean. The wife does not have to get into the work environment. If she wants to, that's great. But I think that it has only created more of a push to put children into these systems because in order to pay the bills...

So just to give you some, there's actually a great book by Elizabeth Warren written in 2004 called The Dual Income Trap. And she wrote about this. It's actually a really good book. I'm not kidding. You should read it. It's really good where she says America will become a worse country because this is 2004, 20 years ago. We're trending to a place where we have millions of moms that have to leave the home and go into the workforce, right?

And back then, conservatives were awful and were like, oh, so what? Like, they'll find fulfillment at work. Like, what a bunch of lies, right? And so anyway, that...

You'll make homeschooling more popular. You'll make all these systems more attractive if we fix the economic pressures on that. And how do you do that? You stop mass migration and you stop importing a bunch of foreign goods just so that we can have plastic that we don't need. Those two things will raise American wages and actually impact education directly. So it kind of all fits. It all fits into a policy agenda. Yes, ma'am.

I am a Calvary Chapel person. I'm thankful that my pastors say... Which one? Merritt Island, apparently. Okay, very good. I'm thankful... Can I move you forward a smidge? Because you're like knocking me over. I'm thankful they always say, don't take my word for it. Read and know the Bible for yourself. Not all churches do that. My question for you is, pastors teach believers to trust in man, incidentally, by not saying anything in the medical realm, in the education realm.

So how can Turning Point USA help equip pastors, maybe short videos, to take that, what they're teaching us, not to trust them and not trust the education process, but look to the word for educating our students at home, as well as...

Can Turning Point USA help Floridians be informed about voting no on Amendment 4 in November? Yes. So that's – for the first part, Turning Point Action can definitely help. Is Amendment 4 the abortion thing? Yeah. That's probably going to pass, unfortunately, and I have a thought on that. I'll tell you why. I'm almost – it's no limits on abortion. Is that right? Yeah. I'm –

It's deceptive, yeah. No, I don't want it to pass, to be very clear. I'm like the most pro-life person ever. But I'm also a realist because I look at data for a living. And so I'm going to tell you about something in a second, which is not an uplifting note to end on, but so be it. But yes, we have lots of resources, TPSA Faith. I hope all of you are coming to the Believer Summit as well. You're going to be blown away by the resources, the videos that we've developed. Let me talk about on the abortion thing. This kind of goes to show that I'm, you know, an abortion absolutist. It's like I want to see it abolished, abolished.

you know, I want to say, I think it's a sin and a stain on the country. I wish the country was as pro-life as I was. Again, I don't know about the wording, but when left to an up or down vote, we don't win anywhere with the voters on this issue. We lose in Montana, we lose in Kentucky, we lose in Kansas, we lose in South Dakota, even the most pro-life States, they want forms of abortion. Right. And so I wish that wasn't the case, but that kind of goes to show that we have to keep on advocating. We have not won a single abortion referendum in nearly a decade.

Yeah, so the country is far more pro-abortion than I'd like. And most Christians, by the way, are pro-abortion. When we do polling at churches, a vast majority of people that attend church regularly believe that we should not have abortion limitations, that we should have maybe six or eight weeks. That's kind of where they land.

That's the vast majority of American Christians. So in closing, everybody, please continue to support Turning Point Academy. It's very important. And remember, there will be a standard by which your children are educated by. Do you want that standard to be the anthem of BLM and the trans agenda or the Ten Commandments and the gospel of Jesus Christ? That is your task. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.